Christian Quotes on Family

"As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live." 

- Pope John Paul II

Serving Leads to Joy

"To maintain a joyful family requires much from both the parents and the children. Each member of the family has to become, in a special way, the servant of the others." 

- Pope John Paul II

Expect a Struggle

"The history of mankind, the history of salvation, passes by way of the family. The family is placed at the center of the great struggle between good and evil, between life and death, between love and all that is opposed to love." 

- Pope John Paul II

The Family is a domestic Church

"Marriage is an act of will that signifies and involves a mutual gift, which unites the spouses and binds them to their eventual souls, with whom they make up a sole family - a domestic church." 

- Pope John Paul II

Family first, make family time
"I think the world today is upside down. Everybody seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater development and greater riches and so on. There is much suffering because there is so very little love in homes and in family life. We have no time for our children, we have no time for each other; there is no time to enjoy each other. In the home begins the disruption of the peace of the world." 

- Mother Teresa

The Familiy & the love for the home

"Try to put in the hearts of your children a love for home. Make them long to be with their families. So much sin could be avoided if our people really loved their homes." 

- Mother Teresa

Realize how important one family, your family, really is

"The family, as the fundamental and essential educating community, is the privileged means for transmitting the religious and cultural values which help the person to acquire his or her own identity. Founded on love and open to the gift of life, the family contains in itself the very future of society; its most special task is to contribute effectively to a future of peace." 

- Pope John Paul II

Marriage
"Christ is an equal partner in your marriage...Above all, accept the fact that you are not alone as a married couple.  Christ is with you, and because Christ is with you, so is His body, and the Church."
--Archbishop Robert Carlson

Surrender/Self-lessness
"Surrender your personal wants to the greater good of your spouse, your family, your community, and your Church...Make sacrifices."
--Archbishop Robert Carlson

Prayer
"Pray together, not just in tough times, but whenever you can."
--Archbishop Robert Carlson

Christian Quotes on Faith and Reason and Suffering

For more quotes specifically related to suffering, see the bottom of this page and also visit this link:
Christian Quotes on Suffering with Patience / Longanimity

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves." 

- Pope John Paul II

"Some psychologists argue that the idea of God is a response to our emotional needs, but this presumption is backwards. Our emotional fluctuations are a psychological response to our lack of love for God.  If God is everything, what else could we possibily want?" 

- Tarek Saab, Gut Check

"Give yourself fully to God.  He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness."
--Mother Theresa

"The more importance given to any clear apprehensions [visions, locutions or feelings], the less capacity the soul has for entering the abyss of faith, where all else is absorbed."
--Saint John of the Cross

"Faith is not a contract. Faith is surrender.  If no other relationship in our experience is one of self-surrender, if it's all contractual, people won't know how to believe." 

- Archbishop Francis George

"I believe though I do not comprehend, and I hold by faith what I cannot grasp with the mind." 

- St. Bernard

"Faith means the fundamental response to the love that has offered itself up for me. It thus becomes clear that faith is ordered primarily to the inconceivability of God's love, which surpasses us and anticipates us. Love alone is credible; nothing else can be believed, and nothing else ought to be believed. This is the achievement, the work‚ of faith: to recognize this absolute prius, which nothing else can surpass; to believe that there is such a thing as love, absolute love, and that there is nothing higher or greater than it." 

- Fr. Hans Urs Von Balthasar

"Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it." 

- St. Blaise Pascal

"Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods." 

- C.S. Lewis

"That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy."

--Jonathan Swift

"Truth is not determined by a majority vote." 

- Pope Benedict XVI

"Socialism is the religion people get when they lose their religion."

--Richard John Neuhaus

Faith, Reasoning, and Suffering:

   Why does it all have to be so difficult?  It drives me crazy.  All you can do is just accept the way it is or go crazy.  

     I read these great thoughts of the saints and think, really?  I am supposed to really accept that this is how God wants it?  Suffer to gain happiness?  What sort of weird thinking is that?  The only answer is He did it so go with it.  He said so, so quit thinking like a man.  But I am a man!

     As long as God's promises are true, then the greatest frustration is the devil's.  Everything he does is used for good in the end.  The greatest of all his plans, all His cruel demented twisted crap ends up in a greater good.  

All things work for God.  All of this mental and physical suffering is our 

pathway.  The devil mucks it up and the muck becomes pavement for us to get even closer to God.  Then every suffering endured patiently is another battle won.

     Job:  Life on earth is warfare.

     The problem is accepting, really accepting, like these saints did.  Can I do this?  This seems like gobbledygook sometimes, but insanity is the alternative.  So God's reason must be true.  God's rational mind must trump my irrational one.  So, as long as I cannot accept these statements below, I am irrational.

"One cannot desire freedom from the Cross when one is especially chosen for the cross."

--Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), who suffered the Nazi holocaust

"Apart from the cross, there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven."

--Saint Rose of Lima

"Let us fear more to be deprived of sufferings than a miser fears to lose his treasures."

--Saint Paul of the Cross

Comments on Good Resulting from Suffering:
How does God use suffering and adversity to do good? He allows it to purify our souls, aiding us in our understanding of Who created us and to Whom we shall turn for all we need. He is not selfish in wanting us to depend on Him. He is a loving Father, who wants us to know Him, who is Love. Resisting Him is no different from our children resisting us and the good we offer. Sometimes, we have to allow our children to suffer in order for them to know what is best.


Excerpt from Imitation of Christ

1.12 Why Adversity
The Twelfth Chapter
The Value of Adversity

It is good for us to have trials and troubles at times, for they often remind us that we are on probation and ought not to hope in any worldly thing. It is good for us sometimes to suffer contradiction, to be misjudged by men even though we do well and mean well. These things help us to be humble and shield us from vainglory. When to all outward appearances men give us no credit, when they do not think well of us, then we are more inclined to seek God Who sees our hearts. Therefore, a man ought to root himself so firmly in God that he will not need the consolations of men.

When a man of good will is afflicted, tempted, and tormented by evil thoughts, he realizes clearly that his greatest need is God, without Whom he can do no good. Saddened by his miseries and sufferings, he laments and prays. He wearies of living longer and wishes for death that he might be dissolved and be with Christ. Then he understands fully that perfect security and complete peace cannot be found on earth.

Christian Quotes on Evangelization

"It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard."
- St. Peter

He should know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
--James 5, 20

"Not to oppose error is to approve it; and not to defend truth is to suppress it; and indeed to neglect to confound evil men, when we can do it, is no less a sin than to encourage them."
- Pope St. Felix III

"There are not over a 100 people in the U.S. that hate the Catholic Church, there are millions however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church, which is, of course, quite a different thing."
- Archbishop Fulton Sheen

But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. For some men, straying from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussion, wanting to be teachers of the Law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions.
Timothy 1:5-7 NASB

"Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person."
- Mother Teresa

"By his own will Christ was dependent on Mary during Advent: he was absolutely helpless; he could go nowhere but where she chose to take him; he could not speak; her breathing was his breath; his heart beat in the beating of her heart. In the seasons of our Advent - waking, working, eating, sleeping, being - each breath is a breathing of Christ into the world."
- Caryll Houselander

"I am a Catholic. As far as possible I go to Mass every day. This is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative!"
- Hilaire Belloc


"It is a lesson we all need - to let alone the things that do not concern us. He has other ways for others to follow Him; all do not go by the same path. It is for each of us to learn the path by which He requires us to follow Him, and to follow Him in that path."
- St. Katharine Drexel

"Lord give me this seeing faith, then my work will never be monotonous. I will find joy in humoring the fancies and gratifying the wishes of all poor sufferers. O beloved sick, how doubly dear you are to me, when you personify Christ; and what a privilege is mine to be allowed to tend you."
- Mother Teresa

"The world calls for and expects from us simplicity of life, the spirit of prayer, charity towards all, especially towards the lowly and the poor, obedience and humility. Without this mark of holiness, our word will have difficulty in touching the heart of modern man. It risks being vain and sterile."
- Pope Paul VI

"We must carry Jesus in our hearts to wherever He wants to go, and there are many places to which He may never go unless we take Him to them. None of us knows when the loveliest hour of our life is striking. It may be when we take Christ for the first time to that grey office in the city where we work, to the wretched lodging of that poor man who is an outcast, to the nursery of that pampered child, to that battleship, airfield, or camp... "
- Caryll Houselander

"I believe God loves the world through us - through you and through me. We use Mother Teresa's name; it is only a name, but we are real co-workers and carriers of His love. Today God loves the world through us. Especially in times like these when people are trying to make God "was," it is you and I, by our love, by the purity of our lives, by our compassion, who prove to the world that God "is.""
- Mother Teresa

"While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart."
- St. Francis of Assisi

'There is nothing of which apostolic men have more need than interior recollection, in order not to endanger their own salvation while seeking that of others.'
--St. Ignatius of Loyola

"If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement."
--Jimmy Carter

Ecumenism, as defined by Vatican Council II and Blessed John Paul II, is "the responsibility of the entire Church and of all the baptised, who must augment the partial communion that already exists among Christians until achieving full communion in truth and charity. Praying for unity ... must then be an integral part of the prayer life of all Christians, in all times and places, especially when people from different traditions come together to work for victory in Christ over sin, evil, injustice and the violation of human dignity."

Catholic Quotes on the Eucharist & Mass

"You can call happy those who saw Him. But, come to the altar and you will see Him, you will touch Him, you will give to Him holy kisses, you will wash Him with your tears, you will carry Him within you like Mary Most Holy."

- St. John Chrysostom

"Jesus has made Himself the Bread of Life to give us life. Night and day, He is there. If you really want to grow in love, come back to the Eucharist, come back to that Adoration." 

- Mother Teresa

"Holy Communion is the shortest and safest way to heaven." 

- Pope Pius X

"When you look at the crucifix, you understand how much Jesus loved you then. When you look at the Sacred Host, you understand how much Jesus loves you now." 

- Mother Teresa of Calcutta


The Lord's Day, a gut check on how much you want to be with God

If you don't want to spend an hour with God on Sunday, then what makes you think you want to spend eternity with Him?  And if you don't want to spend eternity with Him, don't worry, you won't.
--Fr. Rodger Fleming

"The Blessed Eucharist is the perfect Sacrament of the Lord's Passion, since It contains Christ Himself and his Passion." 

- St. Thomas Aquinas

Unless we believe & see Jesus in the appearance of bread on the altar, we will not be able to see him in the distressing disguise of the poor. 

--Mother Teresa

"Receiving the Eucharist means adoring Him whom we receive. Only in this way do we become one with Him, and are given, as it were, a foretaste of the beauty of the heavenly liturgy. The act of adoration outside Mass prolongs and intensifies all that takes place during the liturgical celebration itself." 

- Pope Benedict XVI - Sacramentum Caritatis 66

from an address to priests in Poland, May 25, 2006

"If angels could be jealous of men, they would be so for one reason: Holy Communion." 

- St. Maximilian Kolbe

"Make frequent visits to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and the devil will be powerless against you." 

- St. John Bosco

"In a world where there is so much noise, so much bewilderment, there is a need for silent adoration of Jesus concealed in the Host. Be assiduous in the prayer of adoration and teach it to the faithful. It is a source of comfort and light, particularly to those who are suffering." 

- Pope Benedict XVI - from his meeting with members of the Roman clergy

March 2, 2006

'Holy Communion is the most efficacious means of uniting the soul to God.'

--St. Paul of the Cross

"Of all devotions, that of adoring Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the greatest after the sacraments, the one dearest to God and the one most helpful to us." 

- St. Alphonsus Liguori

 St. Thomas Aquinas (June 8) -- "The Blessed Sacrament is the perfect sacrament of the Lord's passion, since it contains Christ Himself and His Passion."

• St. Cyril of Jerusalem (June 15) -- "The bread and wine of the Eucharist before the invocation of the holy and adorable Trinity were simply bread and wine. But after the invocation the bread becomes the Body of Christ and the wine becomes the Blood of Christ."

• St. Paul (June 29) -- "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes" (1 Corinthians 11:26).

• St. Alphonsus Liguori (July 13) -- "Christ is present on our altars ... to show us the love which He bears us, by being pleased to dwell night and day hidden in the midst of us."

• St. Teresa of Avila (July 20) -- "God the Father bestows on us indescribable blessings through the humanity of His Son."

• St. Peter Julian Eymard (July 27) -- "In all that He did from the Incarnation to the Cross, the end Jesus Christ had in mind was the gift of the Eucharist."

• St. Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower (Aug. 3) -- "The Eucharist on earth is both the anticipation and promise of communion with God in heaven."

• St. Augustine (Aug. 10 ) -- "The Holy Eucharist is our daily bread from heaven. Live as to deserve to receive it daily."

• Blessed Teresa of Calcutta (Aug. 17) -- "If I can give you any advice, I beg you to get closer to the Eucharist and to Jesus."

• St. Ambrose (Aug. 24) -- "This is the bread of everlasting life which supports the substance of our souls."

• St. Francis of Assisi (Aug. 31) -- "Just as he appeared to the apostles in the flesh, Christ is visible to us in the Sacred Bread and Wine."

• Blessed John Paul II (Sept. 7) -- "The first two sacraments (baptism and confirmation) and the most holy mystery of the Eucharist are linked with the vocation to the priesthood and episcopate by a bond o strong and deep that it constantly reveals new riches to our grateful hearts."

Christian quotes on Church and State

Benedict XVI. 4 June 2011

"...The participation of representatives from other Churches and Christian communities, as well as the Jewish and Muslim religions, helps remind us that religion is not a separate area marked off from society. Rather, it is a natural element within society, constantly recalling the vertical dimension: attentive listening to God as the condition for seeking the common good, for seeking justice and reconciliation in the truth. Religion places man in relation with God, the Creator and Father of all, and must therefore be a force for peace. Religions need always to be purified according to their true essence in order to correspond to their true mission".

Church and State:  an article written in the Catholic Encyclopedia, available at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14250c.htm

 

Christian quotes on Confession

"At the time of your examination beware of the devil that ties your tongue." 

- St. Josemaria Escriva

"Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects."

--James, 16

"If the window is dirty, the light cannot come in. If your morals are bad, faith and grace can't fall upon you."

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen

"Your soul stinks. You put all that stuff under your arm. Forget it. The angels can smell you a mile away."

--Mother Angelica (from EWTN)

"Jesus gave the authority to priests to confess sins. You don't like it? Take it up with Him. Nobody just made this stuff up because it's fun. Priests have to confess to other priests too, you know."

--Christopher Majella Paul

"For much of my life I floundered under the excuse of "nobody's perfect," the liberating and over-used phrase that affords guys like me the freedom to pile up sins in a careless and unchecked way. Ironically, being perfect is precisely what we are called to be!"

-- Tarek Saab, Gut Check

"Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."

--Oscar Wilde

"Those who have lost their purity are like a piece of cloth stained with oil; you may wash it and dry it, and the stain always appears again; so it requires a miracle to cleanse the impure soul."

--Saint Jean-marie Baptiste de Vianney, the Cure of Ars

"Confession heals, confession justifies, confession grants pardon of sin. All hope consists in confession. In confession there is a chance for mercy. Believe it firmly. Do not doubt, do not hesitate, never despair of the mercy of God. Hope and have confidence in confession."

--St. Isidore of Seville

"The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works."

--St. Augustine

"Many who confess their venial sins out of custom and concern for order but without thought of amendment remain burdened with them for their whole life and thus lose many spiritual benefits and advantages."

--St. Francis de Sales

Christian quotes on Love and Charity

"Love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery." 

- Archbishop Fulton Sheen

Hatred stirs up disputes but love covers all offenses.

--Proverbs 10:12

Above all, let your love for one another be intense because love covers a multitude of sins.

--1 Peter, 4:8

The bread in your box belongs to the hungry; the cloak in your closet belongs to the naked; the shoes you do not wear belong to the barefoot; the money in your vaults belongs to the destitute.

--Saint Basil

"So the divine love is sacrificial love. Love does not mean to have and to own and to possess. It means to be had and to be owned and to be possessed. It is not a circle circumscribed by self, it is arms outstretched to embrace all humanity within its grasp."" 

- Archbishop Fulton Sheen

"I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love." 

- Mother Teresa

"The person who does not decide to love forever will find it very difficult to really love for even one day." 

- Pope John Paul II

"Anyone who truly loves God travels securely." 

- St. Teresa of Avila

"If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves."

--Thomas Sowell

"No one, however weak, is denied a share in the victory of the cross. No one is beyond the help of the prayer of Christ." 

- St. Leo the Great

"Love to be real, it must costÀúit must hurtÀúit must empty us of self." 

- Mother Teresa

"It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters." 

- Mother Teresa

"Have a great compassion for people. To be able to have a heart full of compassion, we need to pray. Especially be kind, be loving to the poor. We think we do so much for the poor, but it is they who make us rich. We are in debt to them. Do you want to do something beautiful for God? There is a person who needs you. This is your chance." 

- Mother Teresa

"Charity unites us to God. There is nothing mean in charity, nothing arrogant. Charity knows no schism, does not rebel, does all things in concord. In charity all the elect of God have been made perfect." 

- St. Clement I

"We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But if that drop was not there, I think the ocean would be less by that missing drop. We don't have to think in numbers. We can only love one person at a time - serve one person at a time." 

- Mother Teresa

"Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work." 

- Mother Teresa

"Real love is demanding. I would fail in my mission if I did not tell you so. Love demands a personal commitment to the will of God." 

- Pope John Paul II

"There is no place for selfishness˜and no place for fear! Do not be afraid, then, when love makes demands. Do not be afraid when love requires sacrifice." 

- Pope John Paul II

"At the end of life, we shall be judged by love." 

- San Juan de la Cruz

"The woman is at the heart of the home. Let us pray that we women realize the reason for our existence: to love and be loved and through this love become instruments of peace in the world." 

- Mother Teresa

'You ask me for some short prayer by which to testify your love for God. I know of and consider nothing more efficacious than this same love, for when one loves, everything speaks of love, even our most absorbing occupations can be a proof of our love. Love then -- as St. Augustine says -- and do what you will.'

--St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

"By your work you show what you love and what you know." 

- St. Bruno

Christian quotes on Anger

'Only the person who becomes irate without reason, sins. Whoever becomes irate for a just reason is not guilty. Because, if ire were lacking, the science of God would not progress, judgments would not be sound, and crimes would not be repressed.'

--St. Thomas Aquinas

"Watch out for your anger to grow into resentment and hatred!"

--Christopher Majella Paul

"Hatred stirs up disputes but love covers all offenses."

--Proverbs 10:12

"Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun set on your anger and do not give the devil a chance to work on you."

--Ephesians 4:26-27

"It is because anger and impatience are the very pith and sap of pride thalt they please the devil so much...There is no sin nor wrong that gives a man such a foretaste of hell in this life as anger and impatience."

--Saint Catherine of Siena

"Impatience is the beginning and occasion of every sin."

--Saint Catherine of Siena

"Impatience shows more clearly than any other sin that the soul is deprived of God."

--Saint Catherine of Siena

"There is no ideal situation. You can't get rid of your cross."

--Mother Angelica

"God's law in the Old Testament is clear and unambiguous: You shall not kill. Jesus is even more demanding: Every one who is angry is liable to judgment. Sins against the Fifth Commandment are easy to commit. Any time we think, speak or act out of anger or hatred or jealousy or revenge, we abuse God's commandment that we respect His most precious gift, the gift of life — especially human life."

--Archbishop Robert J. Carlson

The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn't angry enough.

--Bede Jarrett 

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it. 

--Marcus Aurelius 

Christopher West to speak at ICD (Immaculate Conception in Dardenne Prairie, MO)on April 11 @ 7:00

Christopher West at ICD on April 11 @ 7:00

St. Joseph Radio announced that Christopher West will be speaking at ICD on April 11 @ 7:00 p.m.  In the words of Christopher "This talk is not only for married people.  If you have a body, this talk is for you."   Please forward this on to all of your friends.   

Divine Mercy Novena

Divine Mercy Novena 2012

Starting on Good Friday, I am joining more than 10,000 Catholics to pray a Divine Mercy Novena!

I'm trying to help this online prayer community (PrayMoreNovenas.com) to get 20,000 people praying this novena for God's Mercy. We all need Mercy, right?

You can sign up for handy email reminders to get the the novena prayers here: http://www.praymorenovenas.com/divine-mercy-novena

After you sign up, maybe you can help spread the word as well. God's Mercy is abundant and overflowing, let's share it!